Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Veterans Affairs Secretary
Robert A. McDonald says that when he falsely told a homeless vet on L.A.’s skid
row that he too had served in the Special Forces, he was trying to connect.

“What you try to do when
you connect with someone is try to find common ground. And with veterans, my
common ground is my veteran experience. So what I was trying to do is find a
way to connect with that veteran,” McDonald told reporters Tuesday, apologizing
for his mistake.

It happened last month
when McDonald was taking part in the Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count.
Looking for veterans who needed help, McDonald asked a homeless man if he was a
vet. The man said yes, and McDonald asked where he served.

“Special Forces,” the
man said.

“Special Forces? What
years? I was in Special Forces,” McDonald replied, animatedly.

A CBS News crew with
McDonald captured the exchange and broadcast it Jan. 30 as part of a news story
on homeless vets. The Huffington Post first reported the discrepancy Monday,
and other news organizations naturally joined in, often mentioning the
embellished accounts of war experience by NBC’s Brian Williams and Fox News’s
Bill O’Reilly.

Headlines trumpeted
McDonald’s misstatement as a lie. That’s a heavy word, but these days we throw
it around lightly. Everybody loves calling out lies and liars. Back in 2003, “Lies And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them” by Al
Franken, now a U.S. senator from Minnesota, zoomed to the top of bestseller
lists.

And yet, to say someone
lied is more than a quick way of saying truth was not his constant companion. A
lie is a deliberate attempt to deceive. When we say someone lies, we assume
moral superiority. You and I misspeak, but They lie.

We need to hold onto the
distinction between intentional deceit and a mistake in the moment. We should give
the benefit of the doubt to someone who chooses words poorly once in conversation
as opposed to someone who repeatedly makes calculated attempts to mislead.

Unfortunately for
McDonald, who is trying to rebuild the credibility of the scandal-plagued VA,
this was his second widely publicized falsehood this month. On NBC’s “Meet the
Press” Feb. 15, he claimed that 900 VA employees had been fired since he took
office, 60 for manipulating wait times for appointments. In both cases, actual
number turned out to be far lower, fact checkers reported.

The VA conceded that
McDonald’s numbers were incorrect, but he has not explained how he went on a
national TV interview show with faulty statistics, and that’s troubling. Was it
bad staff work or something worse?

He was unequivocal,
though, about the Special Forces blurt.

“In an attempt to
connect with that veteran and to make him feel comfortable, I incorrectly
stated that I too had been in Special Forces,” he said. “That was wrong, and I
have no excuse.”

A 1975 graduate of West
Point, McDonald, according to his official biography, “completed Jungle, Arctic
and Desert Warfare training and earned the Ranger tab,” which indicates he
completed Army Ranger training. He served in the 82nd Airborne but
not in Army Special Forces. He was chairman, president and CEO of The
Procter& Gamble Co. from 2009 to 2013.

At a time when many
veterans feel isolated and alienated, McDonald should be applauded for trying
to break down the government’s wall of bureaucracy. In his first national news
conference, he gave out his cell phone number so vets could call him directly.

But he’s right that
there’s no excuse for his over-zealous attempt to connect. He has apologized to
the White House, members of Congress and veterans.

With two strikes,
McDonald insists he will do better to ensure that what he says is accurate. He
must deliver on that promise.

Americans can have
charity for a stupid mistake or two but they won’t put up with repeated efforts
to mislead. No lie.

Thursday, February 19, 2015

Hillary Clinton will bring baggage to the 2016 campaign that
she didn’t have in 2008 and that Bill Clinton couldn’t have imagined in 1992.

It’s the price of success. The Clinton Foundation is again raising big
money from foreign governments for its global charitable programs.

The foundation has received large contributions from the
United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Oman, the Canadian agency that is promoting
the Keystone XL pipeline, and other foreign entities, the Wall Street Journal,
Washington Post and other news organizations reported.

In all, the foundation received nearly $2 billion in
donations and pledges from foreign and domestic contributors between its launch
in 2001 to the end of 2013, said the Post, which reported that of donors who
gave more than $1 million, a third are based outside the United States, and of
those who gave more than $5 million, more than half are foreigners.

At least $48 million came from overseas governments,
according to the Journal’s tally.

The donations support global projects tackling environmental,
health and economic development problems, and they appear to be perfectly legal.
While it is unlawful for foreign nationals to give to U.S. political campaigns,
Clinton is not a candidate.

But the contributions raise questions about a possible president’s
ties to foreign interests, and Clinton’s foes will make sure no one forgets.

When Clinton became secretary of state in 2009, the
foundation suspended fundraising from foreign governments at the Obama
administration’s request. It was thought inappropriate for Bill Clinton to be
raising money from other countries while his wife was the president’s top adviser
on foreign affairs.

When she left the State Department in 2013 and joined the
foundation -- now called the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation – it
resumed overseas fundraising.

“Now that she is
gearing up to run for president, the same potential exists for foreign
governments to curry favor with her as a potential president of the United
States,” ethicist Kirk Hanson of Santa Clara University in California, told the
Journal, which discovered the donations during a search of the foundation’s
online database.

Hanson and others urged the foundation to reinstate the ban
on foreign funds. It should do so immediately to avoid the appearance of
conflicts-of-interest.

The Post reported Thursday: “Foreign donors and countries
that are likely to have interests before a potential Clinton administration –
and yet are ineligible to give to U.S. political campaigns – have affirmed
their support for the family’s work through the charitable giving.”

As Republicans pounced, calling for the foundation to return
foreign funds, the foundation defended its “strong donor integrity and
transparency practices that go above and beyond what is required of U.S.
charities and well beyond the practices of most peer organizations.”

The news invites a closer look at Clinton, who’s widely
regarded as the Democratic frontrunner if and when she enters the 2016 race. On
one hand, the historical appeal of a first woman president remains strong, and
Clinton has burnished her credentials as senator and secretary of state. Fans
can argue that the family foundation’s fundraising success shouldn’t be held
against her.

Many Democrats and even some Republicans remember fondly her
husband’s presidency with its booming economy and budget surpluses. (Never mind
that messy impeachment business.)

But hold on, Rip Van Winkle. Hillary is not Bill. Heck, Bill isn’t even
Bill. Critics will say the Clintons are as inside as insiders get. Hillary enjoys
strong support, personal and financial, but she is s cozy with Wall Street. Her
six-figure speaking fees from financial firms raise eyebrows. She is the Democrats’
future?

Yes, for now, anyway. Half of those surveyed this month said
Hillary Clinton represents the future, the highest of seven potential
presidential candidates. Nearly three in four Democrats and independents who
lean Democratic thought so. Both Republican Jeb Bush and Democrat Joe Biden
were seen as representing the past by nearly two-thirds of people surveyed in
the CNN/ORC poll.

This matters because as Bill Clinton, who cast himself as a
“New Democrat” in the 1990s, says, Americans are always about the future.

We may be about to see if a Clinton with new baggage can be
the future in the 21st Century.

Thursday, February 12, 2015

The nation’s safety net for the
disabled will be forced to cut benefits by nearly 20 percent next year, unless
Congress acts.

So what’s the new Republican chairman
of the Senate Budget Committee doing about the problem? Blaming President Barack
Obama.

And what’s the top Democrat on the
committee doing? Blaming Republicans.

Here we go again.

Obama’s “effort to paper over the
problem is a classic example of Washington ducking a real American need,” charged
Budget chairman Mike Enzi, Republican of Wyoming, as he opened a committee hearing
Wednesday on the “coming crisis” in the disability insurance program.

But liberal Sen. Bernie Sanders of
Vermont countered: “Republicans are manufacturing a phony crisis in Social
Security in order to cut the earned benefits of millions of the most vulnerable
people in this country.”

Sanders, technically an independent,
is weighing a presidential bid. He issued a report Tuesday with the provocative
title: “Republican Efforts to Cut Social Security Benefits Pit Disabled
Americans Against Senior Citizens.”

The disability program’s looming
insolvency has been predicted since 1994. In December of next year, the disability
trust fund will be depleted, triggering automatic benefit cuts of 19 percent
for the nearly 11 million disabled workers and their families who receive
disability payments.

“I don’t want to be dramatic,”
acting Social Security Administrator Carolyn Colvin told the budget committee,
but such a cut for disabled people whose average monthly benefit is $1,200
would be “a death sentence.”

Fireworks aside, helping the disabled
is an issue on which Democrats and Republicans have agreed recently and can
again, if someone – anyone – will take the risk of forging a bipartisan
consensus.

Last December, the Senate and House
passed by wide margins and Obama signed into law the Achieving a Better Life
Experience (ABLE) Act, which allows families with a disabled child to save for
long-term care through tax-sheltered savings accounts similar to 529 accounts families
use to save for college.

Action was far from quick; the ABLE
bill was first introduced in 2006. But 85 percent of Congress signed on as
cosponsors, even after the conservative Heritage Foundation complained that the
bill was “a decisive step in expanding the welfare state.”

To shore up disability’s finances,
Obama proposes reallocating a portion of payroll taxes from the retirement
trust fund to the disability fund. Lawmakers have approved reallocations from
one fund to the other 11 times, most recently in 1994.

But one of the first actions by
House Republicans in the new Congress was to pass a rule making reallocation
contingent on measures to improve Social Security’s overall solvency. Republicans
say reallocation is merely robbing Peter to pay Paul and fails to solve the
crisis; Democrats say the new rule is a stealth attack on Social Security.

Sanders says there’s no crisis
because the Social Security trust fund has enough to pay all benefits to all
recipients for 18 years. He also says it’s time to raise the income cap on the
Social Security payroll tax to $250,000, from the current $118,500.

Obama did not mention Social
Security in his State of the Union address, but he has included proposals in
his budget to encourage workers with disabilities to stay in the workforce, a
goal many Democrats and Republicans support.

The president proposed testing new strategies,
including services to support those with mental impairments and incentives for
employers, to help people with disabilities remain at work.

He called for reducing disability
benefits to offset state or federal unemployment insurance payments and adding money
for continuing disability reviews. These reviews, required every three to seven
years, determine whether workers remain disabled. The Social Security Administration says the reviews save $9 for every
$1 spent.

Republican Enzi said he was
encouraged that “buried deep in the president’s budget are a few programs that
might be a grudging acknowledgment” that more can be done to create a
disability system that supports work.

But what was missing as Enzi opened
the fight over disability was what steps he would take to stabilize the
program.Obama’s proposals may be baby
steps, but surely Enzi, who has a reputation as a level-headed legislator, could build on them to ensure that those who can return to work do so and those who are unable to work get the help they deserve.

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

The vetoes are coming. The
House plans to vote next week on a Senate-passed bill approving construction of
the Keystone XL pipeline, and that likely will give President Barack Obama his
first chance this year to use his veto pen.

After vetoing just two
bills in six years, Obama already has threatened to reject at least 10 bills contemplated
or under consideration by the Republican-controlled Congress.

That may sound impressive,
but Obama is a veto piker compared with Grover Cleveland, the so-called king of
vetoes. In his eight years as president, Cleveland wielded his veto authority
584 times.

But Cleveland takes
second in total numbers to Franklin D. Roosevelt. In his 12 years in the Oval
Office, FDR had 635 vetoes – and he had Democratic congresses his entire tenure.

As we haven’t seen any
vetoes since 2010, here’s a quick refresher on what Woodrow Wilson (44 vetoes) called
a president’s “most formidable prerogative.”

The word veto comes
from the Latin “I forbid” and refers to the president’s power to disapprove a
bill and prevent its becoming law. The word veto doesn’t appear in the
Constitution, but the framers put the power in Article 1, Section 7 as a check
on the legislative process.

A president has 10
days, excluding Sundays, to sign a bill passed by Congress for it to become law.
With a regular veto, the president returns the bill to the chamber where it
originated, usually with an explanation of his objections. Overriding a veto
requires a two-thirds vote in both the Senate and the House.

If Congress adjourns
during the 10 days, the president can’t return the bill. His decision to withhold
his signature is a pocket veto, and Congress does not have the opportunity to
override.

Since 1789, when the
federal government was founded, 37 of the 44 presidents have used their veto power.
In all there have been 2,564 vetoes -- 1,498 regular and 1,066 pocket.

The last
president to serve two terms without a single veto? Thomas Jefferson.

Congress has overridden
just 4 percent of vetoes, the Congressional Research Service reports, but the
hurdle to overcoming a president’s objections has dropped in recent decades. Since
John F. Kennedy took office in 1961, Congress has overridden 16 percent of
vetoes.

Democrats controlled
both houses of Congress when Obama wielded his veto pen in 2009 and 2010, and
neither veto was overridden.

You won’t be surprised
that both veto threats and vetoes occur more often when the president and Congress
are of different parties. Threats help the president shape legislation because
the party in power knows it will need the support of two-thirds of the Congress
to make law stick over a president’s disapproval.

“For highly
consequential legislation drafted during divided party government, it is hardly
an exaggeration to say the president keeps up a veritable drum-beat of veto
threats,” Princeton University professor Charles M. Cameron wrote in an essay
on “The Presidential Veto” published in 2009.

The vast majority of
vetoes are inconsequential in that they have little public policy effect, he says.
Congress has attempted to override about 80 percent of consequential vetoes
during divided party government, with a success rate of 45 percent, adds Cameron,
who is the author of the 2000 book “Veto Bargaining: Presidents and the
Politics of Negative Power.”

Democrat Cleveland had
a Democratic Congress for only two of his eight years as president. Of his 346
regular vetoes and 238 pocket vetoes, only seven were overridden. Most of the regular vetoes in his first term disallowed bills
to grant veterans benefits to people who didn’t qualify. Even considering their
symbolic value, though, “Cleveland’s vetoes…didn’t amount to much,” Cameron
writes.

George W. Bush was the
first president since John Quincy Adams to serve a full term without a veto,
but that was in the post-9/11 era when Congress was more deferential. Bush
issued 12 vetoes in his second term – 11 when Democrats controlled the Senate
and House – and four were overridden.

Dwight Eisenhower used
the veto to force compromise with Democratic activists, and Bill Clinton forced
House Republicans led by Newt Gingrich to moderate, says Cameron.

So as the vetoes come once
again, we’ll see if Obama can use his leverage to force this Republican
Congress to moderate its demands.